Product appearance is an important consideration for many would-be purchasers of floor coverings including carpets or carpet tiles. Consequently, manufacturers frequently expend substantial time and effort in creating products with aesthetically-pleasing surfaces. Substantial effort is additionally consumed in seeking to develop surfaces that retain aspects of their appearance over time, counteracting the altering effects of, among other things, wear from normal usage, cleaning, and maintenance.
Determining whether carpet tiles retain their appearance over time is presently typically a lengthy or inexact task. Of course, among the simplest methods is to place product samples in a suitable environment for the length of the period at issue. Because the useful life of most carpet tiles is defined in years, however, a testing period equalling the tile's useful life is far too long to represent an efficient use of resources.
Alternatively, devices exist that simulate carpet surface wear by repeatedly contacting the surface with one or more castors. These "wear testing" devices (including the Roller Chair Testing Device 28167 of Feingerate Baumberg) do not account for appearance changes caused by cleaning or maintenance, for example, nor do they contemplate possible soiling of the surface itself over time. The devices additionally use discrete weights to force single-sized, fixed-position castors against the surface under test, limiting their capability in that regard. Other devices such as the TRI carpet walker described in "Instrumentation to Impose and Assess Carpet Wear," Notes on Research No. 425 (June 1989), which report is incorporated herein in its entirety by this reference, affix sneaker sole material to a cylinder in an effort to assess the appearance-change effects of walking on a carpet surface over time. Like "wear testing" devices, however, the TRI carpet walker too neglects the effects of cleaning and maintenance on the surface of the product.